A good week. I journeyed to Levelland for the Texas Plains Trail strategic planning meeting. It was a productive meeting, however, our Executive Director, Deborah Sue McDonald, unfortunately, resigned her position due to family obligations. We will miss her leadership and wish her well in the future. We will be recruiting a new director. The position will be posted through the Texas Historical Commission so anyone interested, please contact them for the job description and application.
The meeting was also interesting in that I received three versions of the Pancake Story with Ms. Polly at the Polly way station outside of Higgins. A relative of the Polly's contacted one of our trail members working on the Quanah Parker arrow markers and pointed out to us the correct version of the story. I will be obtaining that version and will tell you the details in later columns. I thank the Polly family for sharing the correction with us. One of the problems with history is that there are always multiple versions of the events. Stay tuned for the details.

In last Tuesdays mail, We received a letter from the grandson of A.H. Roden with the copy of a letter that Mr. Roden wrote to Will Rogers in 1932 about his adventures as a "cowpuncher" in and around Higgins. The letter is two single typed pages long and full of local lore about the happenings in and around Higgins in 1898 and 1899. So I will be using it as the source for the historical musings for the next few columns since Will Rogers Day will be in August.

ATTENTION PARENTS, GRANDPARENTS, AND 4TH THRU 8TH GRADERS. Do you need something to do before returning to school, please join us August 7 for four days of fun. We will be having a Night at the Museum Telling History camp where two Historians will lead you through the journey of finding a historical personality, researching them, and becoming them. It promises to be fun. It is free so call the museum and register today. 806-852-2123.

HISTORICAL MUSINGS.

This is the introduction of Mr. Roden's letter to Will Rogers: "I'll tell you how I got to Higgins, Texas - for there by hangs a tale". I had spent the major part of the winter of '98 and '99 working for "The Figure Four" outfit in the West end of the Kiawa (Kiowa) country. a fellow by the name of Walker from Kerr county brought a bunch of cattle in there and leased this strip and just to the north over in the Cheyenne country had been settled up pretty well, so the "nesters" were selling Walker quite a bit of feed, but for some reason they failed to agree on some prices so one night they (or some of them at least) while a brisk norther was blowing, slipped in and set fire to Walker's "strip" and cleaned him out so he had to move his cattle. Well, I was "laid-off", so I decided I would go over in the Pan Handle and look for a job. I left the "4" outfit early in the morning, headed Northwest, but for no particular spot or location. At noon I arrived at Wood in Washita county, which consisted of one store with a post office and blacksmith shop. My "pinto" was getting tender-footed, so when I saw the blacksmith sign I took my "hoss" to the shop and asked the smith to shoe him for me while I went in the store to eat a bite. The storekeeper was a middle aged lady by the name
of Port (the town later changed its name to Port) very entertaining and courteous. I devoured a 10 cent box of Sardines and 5 cents worth of crackers, thus lowering my available cash assets to exactly $4.85."

The map that accompanied the letter, has Port between Sayre and Cordell, OK.